Lorenzo Magnani

This article aims at commenting in a novel way on the concept of political correctness, by showing that, even if adopting a politically-correct behavior aims at promoting a precise moral outcome, violence can be still perpetrated, despite good intentions. To afford in a novel way the problem of political correctness, I will adopt a theoretical strategy that adheres to moral stoicism, the problem of “silence”, the “fascist state of the mind” and the concept of “overmorality”, which I have introduced in my book Understanding Violence. The Intertwining of Morality, Religion, and Violence: A Philosophical Stance. I will demonstrate that political correctness certainly obeys the stoic moral rule, which teaches us that we have to diminish conflicts and, so, the potential for derived violence, by avoiding to pronounce words and expressions that can be offensive and so conflict making. Unfortunately, political correctness often increases the so-called already widespread overmorality, typical of our era, and postulates too many minor moral values to be attributed to individuals and groups, which must be respected. Therefore, engaging in political correctness obscures more serious issues regarding social, political and economic life, committing a sin of abstractness and idealization. At the same time, by discouraging the use of words and expressions, the intrinsic overmoralization at work creates potential new conflicts and potential derived violence.

Camouflage commonly refers to the ability to make something appear as different from what it actually is, or not to make it appear at all. This concept originates from biological studies to describe a range of strategies used by organisms to dissimulate their presence in the environment, but it is frequently borrowed by other semantic fields as it is possible to camouflage one’s position, intentions, opinion etc.: an interesting conceptual continuum between the multiple denotations of camouflage seems to emerge from the multiple homologies. Following this outlook, the first part of this paper aims at sketching out the main forms of camouflage as understood within their biological framework, insisting on the inferential dynamics underdetermined and allowing camouflage, making use of the concept of abduction as received from the Peircean heritage. The second part explores some of the most relevant occurrences of camouflage in dialectical and rhetorical perspectives. The third section aims at drawing the sums of the comparison between linguistic and biological camouflage, showing how strategies aimed at debunking verbal camouflage correspond to their respective countermeasures in biologically-intended camouflage.

During the second half of the last century, the importance of serendipitous events in scientific frameworks has been progressively recognized, fueling hard debates about their role, nature, and structure in philosophy and sociology of science. Alas, while discussing the relevance of the topic for the comprehension of the nature of scientific discovery, the philosophical literature has hardly paid attention to the cognitive significance of serendipity, accepting rather than examining some of its most specific features, such as its game-changing effect, the unexpectedness of its occurrence, and its affinity with the concept of “luck”. Thus, in this paper we aim at analyzing these characteristics in the light of their cognitive implications in the recognition, performance, and possible stimulation of serendipitous events in relation to scientific discoveries.

This handbook offers the first comprehensive reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of model-based reasoning. It highlights the role of models as mediators between theory and experimentation, and as educational devices, as well as their relevance in testing hypotheses and explanatory functions. The Springer Handbook merges philosophical, cognitive and epistemological perspectives on models with the more practical needs related to the application of this tool across various disciplines and practices. The result is a unique, reliable source of information that guides readers toward an understanding of different aspects of model-based science, such as the theoretical and cognitive nature of models, as well as their practical and logical aspects. The inferential role of models in hypothetical reasoning, abduction and creativity once they are constructed, adopted, and manipulated for different scientific and technological purposes is also discussed. Written by a group of internationally renowned experts in philosophy, the history of science, general epistemology, mathematics, cognitive and computer science, physics and life sciences, as well as engineering, architecture, and economics, this Handbook uses numerous diagrams, schemes and other visual representations to promote a better understanding of the concepts. This also makes it highly accessible to an audience of scholars and students with different scientific backgrounds. All in all, the Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science represents the definitive application-oriented reference guide to the interdisciplinary field of model-based reasoning.

In her book Abductive Reasoning Atocha Aliseda stresses the attention to the logical models of abduction, centering on the semantic tableaux as a method for extending and improving both the whole cognitive/philosophical view on it and on other more restricted logical approaches. I will describe the importance of increasing logical knowledge on abduction also taking advantage of some ideas coming from the so-called distributed cognition where logical models are seen as forms of cognitive externalizations of preexistent in-formal human reasoning performances.

In her book Abductive Reasoning Atocha Aliseda (2006) stresses the attention to the logical models of abduction, centering on the semantic tableaux as a method for extending and improving both the whole cognitive/philosophical view on it and on other more restricted logical approaches. I will provide further insight on two aspects. The first is re-lated to the importance of increasing logical knowledge on abduction: Aliseda clearly shows how the logical study on abduction in turn helps us to extend and modernize the classical and received idea of logic. The second refers to some ideas coming from the so-called distributed cognition and concerns the role of logical models as forms of cognitive exter-nalizations of preexistent in-formal human reasoning performances. The logical externalization in objective systems, communicable and sharable, is able to grant stable perspectives endowed with symbolic, abstract, and rigorous cogni-tive features. I will also emphasize that Aliseda especially stresses that this character of stability and objectivity of logical achievements are not usually present in models of abduction that are merely cognitive and epistemological, and of ex-treme importance from the computational point of view.

What I call semiotic brains are brains that make up a series of signs and that are engaged in making or manifesting or reacting to a series of signs: through this semiotic activity they are at the same time engaged in “being minds” and so in thinking intelligently. An important effect of this semiotic activity of brains is a continuous process of disembodiment of mind that exhibits a new cognitive perspective on the mechanisms underling the semiotic emergence of meaning processes. Indeed at the roots of sophisticated thinking abilities there is a process of disembodiment of mind that presents a new cognitive perspective on the role of external models, representations, and various semiotic materials. Taking advantage of Turing’s comparison between “unorganized” brains and “logical” and “practical” machines” this paper illustrates the centrality to cognition of the disembodiment of mind from the point of view of the interplay between internal and external representations, both mimetic and creative. The last part of the paper describes the concept of mimetic mind I have introduced to shed new cognitive and philosophical light on the role of computational modeling and on the decline of the so-called Cartesian computationalism.

This paper aims at presenting a concise treatment of some key themes of my recent book Morality in a technological world. Knowledge as duty (Cambridge: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). In recent times, non-human beings, objects, and structures – for example computational tools and devices - haveacquired new moral worth and intrinsic values. Kantian tradition in ethics teaches that human beings do not have to be treated solely as “means”, or as “things”, that is in a merely instrumental way, but also have to be treated as “ends”'. I contend that human beings can be treated as “things” in the sense that they have to be “respected” as things are sometimes. To the aim of reconfiguring human dignity in our technological world I introduce the concept of moral mediator.

The status of abduction is still controversial. When dealing with abductive reasoning misinterpretations and equivocations are common. What did Peirce mean when he considered abduction both a kind of inference and a kind of instinct or when he considered perception a kind of abduction? Does abduction involve only the generation of hypotheses or their evaluation too? Are the criteria for the best explanation in abductive reasoning epistemic, or pragmatic, or both? Does abduction preserve ignorance or extend truth or both? To study some of these conundrums and to better understand the concept of visual abduction, I think that an interdisciplinary effort is needed, at the same time fecundated by a wide philosophical analysis. To this aim I will take advantage of some reflections upon Peirce’s philosophy of abduction that I consider central to highlight the complexity of the concept, too often seen in the partial perspective of limited formal and computational models. I will ponder over some seminal Peircean philosophical considerations concerning the entanglement of abduction, perception, and inference, which I consider are still important to current cognitive research. Peircean analysis helps us to better grasp how model-based, sentential, manipulative, and eco-cognitive aspects of abduction—I have introduced in my book Abductive Cognition —have to be seen as intertwined, and indispensable for building an acceptable integrated model of visual abduction. Even if speculative, Peircean philosophical results on visual abduction certainly anticipate various tenets of recent cognitive research

I will analyse some properties of abduction that are essential from a logical standpoint. When dealing with the so-called ‘inferential problem’, I will opt for the more general concepts of input and output instead of those of premisses and conclusions, and show that in this framework two consequences can be derived that help clarify basic logical aspects of abductive reasoning: (i) it is more natural to accept the ‘multimodal’ and ‘context-dependent’ character of the inferences involved, (ii) inferences are not merely conceived of in the terms of the process leading to the ‘generation of an output’ or to the proof of it, as in the traditional and standard view of deductive proofs, but rather, from this perspective abductive inferences can be seen as related to logical processes in which input and output fail to hold each other in an expected relation, with the solution involving the modification of inputs, not that of outputs. I will also describe that if we wish to naturalize the logic of the abductive processes and its special consequence relation, we should refer to the following main aspects: ‘optimization of situatedness’, ‘maximization of changeability’ of both input and output, and high ‘information-sensitiveness’.

This volume is a collection of papers that explore various areas of common interest between philosophy, computing, and cognition. The book illustrates the rich intrigue of this fascinating recent intellectual story. It begins by providing a new analysis of the ideas related to computer ethics, such as the role in information technology of the so-called moral mediators, the relationship between intelligent machines and warfare, and the new opportunities offered by telepresnece, for example in teaching and learning. The book also ties together the concerns of epistemology and logic, showing, for example, the connections between computers, bio-robotics, and scientific research and between computational programs and scientific discovery. Important results coming from recent computational models of deduction, the dynamic nature of meaning, and the role of reasoning and learning in spatial, visual and exemplar-based compuational frameworks are also addressed. Some stimulating papers carefully study how the interplay between computing and philosophy has also shed new light on the role of rational acceptance in the logic of belief and on the status of old philosophical topics like embodiment and consciousness, the role of information and the problem of realism in the new digital world. Finally, a considerable part of the book addresses the role of intenal and external representations in scientific reasoning and creative inferences as well as the place of manipulation of objects and artifacts in human cognition. Taking these topics together this book describes an aspect of an emerging agenda which is likely to carry the interaction between philosophy, cognition and computing forward into the twenty-first century. The volume is based on the papers that were presented at the International European Conference Computing and Philosophy, E-CAP2004, Italy, held at the University of Paiva, Paiv, Italy in June 2004, chaired by Lorenzo Magnani.

The technological advances of contemporary society have outpaced our moral understanding of the problems that they create. How will we deal with profound ecological changes, human cloning, hybrid people, and eroding cyberprivacy, just to name a few issues? In this book, Lorenzo Magnani argues that existing moral constructs often cannot be applied to new technology. He proposes an entirely different ethical approach, one that blends epistemology with cognitive science. The resulting moral strategy promises renewed dignity for overlooked populations, both of today and of the future.

Gossip has been the object of a number of different studies in the past 50 years, rehabilitating it not only as something worth being studied, but also as a pivotal informational and social structure of human cognition: Dunbar (Rev Gen Psychol 8(2):100–110, 2004) interestingly linked the emergence of language to nothing less than its ability to afford gossip. Different facets of gossip were analyzed by anthropologists, linguists, psychologists and philosophers, but few attempts were made to frame gossip within an epistemological framework (for instance Ayim in (Good gossip, pp. 85–99, 1994)). Our intention in this paper is to provide a consistent epistemological (applied and social) account of gossip, understood as broadly evaluative talk between two or more people, comfortably acquainted between each other, about an absent third party they are both at least acquainted with. Hence, relying on the most recent multidisciplinary literature about the topic, the first part of this paper will concern the epistemic dynamics of gossip: whereas the sociobiological tradition individuates in gossip the clue for the (theoretically cumbersome) group mind and group-level adaptations Wilson et al. (The evolution of cognition, pp. 347–365, 2002), we will suggest the more parsimonious modeling of gossip as a soft-assembled epistemic synergy, understood as a function-dominant interaction able to project a higher organizational level—in our case, the group as group-of-gossips. We will argue that the aim of this synergy is indeed to update a Knowledge Base of social information between the group (as a projected whole) and its members. The second and third part will instead focus on the epistemological labeling of the inferences characterizing gossip: our contention is that the ever-present moral/evaluative dimension in gossip—be it tacit or explicit, concerning the objects or the partners of gossip—is best analyzed through the epistemological framework of abduction. Consequently, we will suggest that a significant role of gossip is to function as a group-based abductive appraisal of social matter, enacted at various levels.

In this article I will show why and how it is useful to exploit the hexagon of opposition to have a better and new understanding of the relationships between morality and violence and of fundamental axiological concepts. I will take advantage of the analysis provided in my book Understanding Violence. The Intertwining of Morality, Religion, and Violence: A Philosophical Stance. Springer, Heidelberg/Berlin, 2011) to stress some aspects of the relationship between morality and violence, also reworking some ideas by John Woods concerning the so-called epistemic bubbles, to reach and describe my own concept of moral bubbles. The study aims at providing a simple theory of basic concepts of moral philosophy, which extracts and clarifies the strict relationship between morality and violence and more, for example the new philosophical concept of overmorality. I will also conclude that this kind of hybrid diagrammatic reasoning is a remarkable example of manipulative explanatory abduction—through drawing—in the spirit of “conceptual structuralism”, promoted by Robert Blanché and further developed by Jean-Yves Béziau.